The Duma and the People

Published:Volna, No. 12, May 9, 1906.

      Published according to theVolnatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1965,

      Moscow,Volume 10,

      pages396-399.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Thequestion of the Duma’s attitude towards the people is the topic of the
day. Everybody is discussing it, and it is being discussed with particular zeal
by the Cadets who pre dominate in the Duma. Here is a very interesting opinion
expressed by the Left-CadetNasha Zhizn, which often reflects the views
of the best of the Cadets.

“Thequestion naturally arises, where is the border-line of unity between
the Duma and the people? Where is the limit beyond which the Duma will either
become the plaything of popular passions or, on the contrary, will be
dissociated from the people and the parties? The attitudes of the people to the
Duma will become dangerous if they are allowed to be spontaneous. Some important
event will occur, and an outbreak of spontaneous discontent will at once affect
the Duma, which will not find it easy to maintain the position of an
independent instrument of the popular will, acting in an organised
way. The history of,
say, the French Revolution, provides numerous examples of the people’s
representatives becoming playthings of the mob. But the opposite may happen:
complete indifference. Can we say with certainty that if the Duma is dispersed
the people will really support it? Will not even those who are demanding
immediate and extremely radical decisions from the Duma pass by with a sceptical
smile and say: we told you that the Duma was impotent? But what will they do;
and when will they do it?”

Andthe author calls for the organisation of all sorts of clubs and meetings for
the purpose of establishing living contacts between the Duma and the
people. “Friendly criticism of the Duma and active support for
it—this is the noble task of the present day.”

Howstrikingly these well-meaning utterances of a high-minded Cadet reflect the
impotence of his party, and of the Duma in which that party reigns! Clubs,
meetings, livingcontacts with the people! Why talk so pompously about obvious things? Does it
need proof that clubs and meetings are useful? The very first breath of free air
that came with the present upswing led to the holding of meetings, the
organisation of clubs, the expansion of the press. This will continue, so long as
outside obstacles do not put an end to it. But this is all a matter of
technique, so to speak. Clubs, meetings, newspapers, the press, petitions (very
strongly advocated by our Right Social-Democrats) all help the Duma to know the
opinion of the people, and the people to know the Duma. All these things are a
thousand times necessary, of course. They all undoubtedly organise and
inform. They all serve to establish “contact”. But think, what kind
of contact? Purely technical contact. The Social-Democratic workers’
organisations must carefully watch the Cadet Duma. There can be no argument
about that. But however well they are informed and however well they may be
organised, their “contact” will not be contact of interests, of
identical tasks, or of identical political behaviour. And that is the whole
point. Our high-minded radical sees onlyhowcontacts are established,
he has not noticed thecontentof the contacts; he has overlooked the
difference in class interests, the difference in political tasks.

Whyhas he overlooked this? Because, being a Cadet, he is unable to see, or is
afraid to admit, that the Cadet Duma isbehindthe broad masses of the
people.The Duma is not leading the masses of the politically conscious peasants
in the struggle for land and freedom. It is lagging behind the peasants,restrictingthe range of their struggle. Needless to say how far the
Duma is lagging behind the proletariat. The Cadet Duma is not the leader of the
peasant masses and of the working class, but a “high-minded”
mediator, dreaming of an alliance on the right and of sympathy from the
left. The Cadet Duma is what the Cadets have made of the Duma. And the party of
“people’s freedom” is a bourgeois party, wavering between the
democratic petty bourgeoisie and the counter revolutionary big bourgeoisie,
between the desire to lean on the people and fear of the latter’s independent
revolutionary activity. The more acute the struggle between the people and the
old regime becomes, the more intolerable is the position of the mediator, the
more impotent will be those who waver.Hence the dejected tone which marks the above-quoted passage and all the
      speeches of the Cadets. Hence their bitter complaints about their own
      impotence. Hence their eternal attempts to throw the blame for their own
      weakness, irresoluteness and instability on the people.

Ponderdeeply over the significance of this fear of a “high minded”
bourgeois radical lest the Duma become the play thing of popular passions, the
plaything of the crowd! These wretched people realise that they cannot be the
vehicle of popular passion, the leader of the people, and so they blame the
people for their own impotence and backwardness, contemptuously refer to it as
the crowd, and disdainfully refuse to serve as a “plaything”. And
yet all the freedom that still exists in Russia was won only by the
“crowd”, only by the people, who heroically came out into the
street, who made countless sacrifices in the fight, and who with their deeds
supported the great watchword: freedom or death. All these actions of the people
were the actions of the crowd. The whole new era in Russia was won, and is being
maintained, only by popular passion.

Butyou, the party of words about “people’s freedom”, you dread
popular passion, you are afraid of the crowd. And yet you have the effrontery to
accuse the “crowd” of being indifferent! You, sceptics by nature,
sceptics in your entire programme, sceptics in all your half-hearted tactics,
describe the people’s disbelief in your phrases as “scepticism”! Your
political horizon does not stretch further than the question:

will the people support the Duma?

Weput the question the other way round. Are the Cadets in the Duma supporting
the people? Or are they trailing in the wake of the people? Will these sceptics
support the people when it “does” again what ithas already
donefor the cause of freedom? Or will they put spokes in its wheel, damp
down its energy, accuse it of anarchism and Blanquism, the spontaneity of folly
and the folly of spontaneity?

Butthe masses of the peasantry and the working class will do as they see fit,
contemptuously throwing aside the miserable fears and doubts of the flabby
bourgeois intelligentsia. They will not support the Duma. They will sup port
their own demands, which the Cadet Duma has so in completely and inadequately
expressed.

TheCadets think that they are the hub of the universe. They dream about
peaceful parliamentarism. They have taken dreams for reality. They, if you
please, are fighting, and so they must be supported. But is not the opposite the
case, gentlemen? Is it not you who are constantly uttering a phrase that nobody
in really parliamentary countries ever thinks of uttering, the phrase:
“They will disperse the Duma?” Whoever takes the trouble to ponder
seriously over the meaning of this phrase, over the state of affairs in which it
has to be uttered, will realise that the future holds out for us either an
abomination of desolation painted up with spurious phrases, or new deeds
accomplished by the crowd, new deeds accomplished by the great passion of the
people.

Wecannot expect any help for this cause from the Cadets. Let us hope that the
minority in the Duma, the “Trudovik Group” and the “Workers’
Group”, will take a stand different from that of the Cadets. It is not
support for themselves that they will solicit from the people, nor will they
proclaim themselves a force in our toy parliament: they will concentrate all
their efforts and all their activities on helping in some way to promote the
great work ahead.